Synopses & Reviews
In this book, Tim Dee tells the story of four green fields spread around the world: their grasses, their hedges, their birds, their skies, and both their natural and human histories. These four fieldswalkable, mappable, man-made, mowable, knowable, but also secretive, mysterious, wild, contested, and changingplay central roles in the sweeping panorama of world history and in the lives of individuals. In Dees telling, a field is never just a setting for great battles or natural disasters, though it is often this as well. A field is the oldest and simplest and truest measure of what a man needs in life, especially when looked at, contemplated, worked in, lived with, and written about.
Dees four fields, which he has known and studied for more than twenty years, are the fen field at the bottom of his private garden, a field in southern Zambia, a prairie in Little Bighorn, Montana, and a grass meadow in the Exclusion Zone at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Meditating on these four fields, Dee makes us look anew at where we live and how. He argues that we must attend to what we have made of the wild.
Review
Praise for
Four Fields"Sprawling in its descriptions of nature and of the histories that inform each of the places he visits, Dee's work defies linearity.
Lyrical and thought-provoking
" Kirkus
"Four Fields is an enthralling and unexpected book or four short books about what we have made of the natural world. The language itself is rich and loamy. There is evidence of much thought here, as well as a naturalist's profound observation. It is proof that really, there is no such thing as "nature writing" Dee gives us the wide world and everything in it, including ourselves and all our works." The Guardian
"Four Fields” is about far more than pieces of earth; it is a summary of humanitys aspirations." The Economist
Praise for The Running Sky
Thrillingly original
Dees extraordinary, beautifully written account of a life spent watching birds is a fine addition to the flourishing genre of British nature writing Lynn Barber, Sunday Times
Serious and playful
creates and powerful and intensely poetic paean to what others have called the wonder of birds The Guardian
A little masterpiece, like an intricate skein of all the avian life he has seen, a gorgeously overpopulated love letter to birds The Independent
Its author has a forensic eye for detail and a gift for poetry
He is in the front rank of contributors to the literature of natural history.
Daily Telegraph
To write a book about a years birdwatching as keenly observed as this, you have to be dedicated to the point of obsession; to write one as transcendent, you must be a poet The Times
Review
"Sprawling in its descriptions of nature and of the histories that inform each of the places he visits, Dee's work defies linearity.
Lyrical and thought-provoking
"
Kirkus"…exceptional book of sharp observation, ardent research, exquisite language, and persuasive appreciation.…Dee infuses each page with an astonishing fecundity of stories about innovation, folly, crime, and revelation, forever transforming our perception of civilizations seedbeds and graves." Booklist, Starred
"Through metaphor, literature, and history, the author shares how humans have shaped the fields of the world and how nature has responded over time. VERDICT: A lyrical exploration of four very different fields that will appeal to readers interested in our influence on the natural world." Library Journal
"
grand nature-writing tradition
Dee interlaces careful descriptions of his experience of being in these spaces with the human history that turned these lands to agricultural use and then permitted nature to reclaim them, winding lyrical stories of the interaction between person and place, history and physicality. Equally at ease with people, birds, and old guidebooks
" Publishers Weekly
"Four Fields is an enthralling and unexpected book or four short books about what we have made of the natural world. The language itself is rich and loamy. There is evidence of much thought here, as well as a naturalist's profound observation. It is proof that really, there is no such thing as "nature writing" Dee gives us the wide world and everything in it, including ourselves and all our works." The Guardian
"Four Fields” is about far more than pieces of earth; it is a summary of humanitys aspirations." The Economist
About the Author
Tim Dee was born in Liverpool in 1961. He has worked as a BBC radio producer for more than twenty years and divides his life between Bristol and Cambridge. His first book, The Running Sky: A Birdwatching Life, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2009.